ABSTRACT
Guatemalan state institutions, and the economic and military elites they are designed to serve, have depended since their inception on paramilitary violence. Despite shifting forms of privatized violence in postwar Guatemala, many organized armed actors today function as paramilitary forces and continue historical ties with earlier paramilitaries. Through a review of paramilitary organizations in Guatemala, this chapter argues that these are both historical and functional to the state, as they have been essential to the creation and evolution of key institutions. In support of this argument, the chapter first traces the history of paramilitaries and their relationship with the Guatemalan state, from the colonial era through to the genocidal counterinsurgency of the 1960s–1990s. The chapter then outlines three forms of paramilitarism today. Two cases illustrate the relationship between paramilitaries, elites, and the state in contemporary Guatemala: the use of private security guards in evicting thirteen peasant communities from the Polochic Valley and the role of a local vigilante group in attempting to suppress mobilization by the Campesino Committee of the Highlands (Comité Campesino del Altiplano, CCDA) peasant organization.
